Gorman Hills Easter Eve California Coreopsis & Poppies

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Los Angeles County
mid afternoon Saturday April 19, 2003, slide 03I10-27
Pentax 67 AEII, 55>100mm, Gitzo G1325 Mk2
Drum scanned Fuji Provia 100F 220 film to 200mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature top right

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The Gorman Hills are located in northeast Los Angeles County just south of Tejon Pass beside the Interstate 5 freeway. For decades it's color has caught the eyes of springtime drivers along the highway. Like most good wildflower sites in Southern California, the displays of wildflowers vary greatly from year to year with good winter rains a key factor. On April 19, 2003 that was the eve of Easter Sunday, the displays were so remarkable, one might argue they were likely the most awesome wildflowers displays in the state of California during our lifetime.

Setting up these displays was a tropical storm about February 12 that apparently concentrated exceptionally heavy precipitation in this area as it made national news. A mudslide up to four feet deep covered parts of the broad I5 freeway for a mile. The previous years since 1998 had been droughty which tends to build up a cache of dormant seeds. Another factor that made this Saturday special was that it was a particularly stormy period for three weeks prior to this date. Hence areas we ventured into were absolutely pristine with no use paths of trampled vegetation. In fact by the end of the day the roadside had become a carnival of people with the vegetation in places looking like an elephant herd had passed through. Saturday was a mostly sunny day with an exceptionally deep blue sky. Further of importance to photographers interested in still foregrounds, the morning was absolutely dead calm with only a slight intermittent breeze in the afternoon. Anyone familiar with Antelope Valley knows a calm April day is rare.

Early in the morning, a photographer friend and I parked on a frontage road west of I5, surveying the amazing colors across the freeway making excited plans to climb the steep slopes above the east side Gordon Post frontage road.

About a dozen cars were soon parked at what would be the main access point for the public during the next month. Big tripods and cameras began creeping up that slope. We however parked to the south, and then climbed an obscure narrow gully. Reaching the upper broad gully above, we were absolutely awestruck by the waist deep jungle of absolutely peaking colorful growth without a track to be seen.

This view is from about elevation 4,000 feet northward with the 4,600 foot skyline ridge top about 2000 feet distant. A vast sea of intense color and glorious fragrance on smooth curves. In the area in this view, flowers were shin to knee deep. The dominant yellow species is California coreopsis, coreopsis californica. The orange flowers are of course our famous California poppy, eschscholtzia californica. Purple flowers are a combination of globe gilia, gilia capitata ssp abrotanifolia, and lacy phacelia, phacelia cryptantha. On the hillside mid right is a large patch of deep blue hued Bentham lupine, lupinus benthamii. Can you distinguish between the slight variation in hue between patches of lupine and gilia? Also the light brown hue of the sandy soil shows through in one small patch. In the lower left corner one can make out the smaller yellow-orange petals of fiddleneck, amsinckia tessellata, and small blue hued lupinus bicolor, aka minature lupine. And here and there are a few white tidy tips, layia platyglossa. Several other smaller less showy species were overwhelmed below in the green jungle.

As a photographer I have been blessed to experience many amazing sights. When I first came upon this scene near mid day, I could not contain my joy praise be it was so overwhelming dazzling with color. It was one shot I wished I'd brought my Gitzo center column and stepladder for. The next weekend we came back to Gorman and were surprised how quickly the showy coreopsis had faded though other flowers as lupine put on a good show for a few more weeks.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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